Considering 64bit fixnums on 64bit GCL



Greetings!  I am considering backporting this into the production branch
of gcl.   I have a local version which passes all maxima tests.  

As you know, many of these run using optimized modular arithmetic.  In
particular, one cannot do circular modular multiplication in 64bits in
registers.  

maxima defines *bigprimes* as < (ash most-positive-fixnum -1).  My
question is, is it not sensible to make this 

< (ash 1 (ash (integer-length most-positive-fixnum) -1))

Take care,
-- 
Camm Maguire			     		    camm at maguirefamily.org
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah